It is a challenge to automate the generation of vocal user interface code while starting from the data model of the entire software application. The current development tools today allow the developers to generate a vocal user interface code by firstly designing a dialog flow from which the vocal user interface code is then automatically generated. As vocal interface ergonomic is usually extremely sensitive, the developers need to modify and customize the vocal user interface code which has been generated in the first step. This development concept has been captured and formalized by OMG in the UML Profile for Voice (OMG).
There is a need that the vocal user interface code of software applications could be automatically generated from a modelization of the data to be captured by the application, for instance a meta data model such as UML class diagrams. However, no such method to automatically generate vocal user interface code directly from a meta data model has been found to date, and even OMG modelization attempt remains highly focused on the interface and dialog flow.
In parallel to the existing software development tools for user interface development, there is a raising number of business applications incorporating highly understandable wizards as graphical user interface. Wizards are interactive software, helping a user using step-by-step pages to achieve complex business operations through a graphical user interface in a guided way. Similarly, a guided way equivalent to wizards for graphical user interface applications is required for vocal user interface applications. It is not possible today to automatically generate directly from a meta data model of a software application, vocal user interface code which allows the user to enter application data in a guided way as done through wizards of a graphical user interfaces.
It is noted that, with the existing prior art, it is not possible today to automatically generate wizard code of a graphical user interface code from a meta data model. For graphical user interfaces there are tools for generating code implementing dialogs of an application starting from a high-level design of the application such as an entity-relationship model. Automatic generation of dialog code has been, and it is still used, by many different software tools, but mostly in development tools like the DynamicTMN® CMIP MIT Browser. It is noted that all of SNMP or CMIP based management systems create the user interface dynamically based on a persistence model. One example is described at the Internet address: http://www.monfox.com/dtmn/java-cmip-mit-browser.html where the user interface is created automatically based on an OO model captured in a CMIP definition. The DynamicTMN® CMIP MIT Browser proposes a treeview of the data model objects in conjunction to a generic property-value table editor in the form of what the Eclipse EMF framework provides. It also proposes more advanced dialogs, still using a entity-relationship model associated with additional graphical inputs, manual ones, like what is defined in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,567 describing an automatic interface layout generator for database systems.
There is thus a need to automatically develop vocal user interface code starting from a meta data model of the software application which include vocal user interfaces. Furthermore, in order to help the user to perform operations in a guided way, there is a need for developing vocal interfaces guiding the user for entry of data in a similar way as wizards when they are used in the graphical user interfaces of the software applications.